Ballads of a Cheechako 



Ballads of a Cheechako 



BY 

ROBERT W. SERVICE 

Author of 
"The Spell of the Yukon" 



NEW YORK 

BARSE & HOPKINS 

PUBLISHERS 



Pts. 



9*1 






.c 



Copyright, 1909, 

BY 

Edward Stern & Co.. lira. 



£601/ e 



CONTENTS 

TO THE MAN OF THE HIGH NORTH., n 

My rhymes are rough, and often in ray rhyming 

MEN OF THE HIGH NORTH 12 

Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing; 

THE BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN 
LIGHTS 15 

One of the Down and Out — that's me. Stare at 
me well, ay, stare! 

THE BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN 29 

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living 
the life of shame, 

THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE 39 

1 tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, 
I did. 

THE BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL 45 

I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous 
Bill MacKie, 

THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE. ... 51 

This is the tale that was told to me by the man with 
the crystal eye, 



CONTENTS 

THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND 56 

'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women 
were far and rare, 



THE BALLAD OF HARD-LUCK HENRY. . 6s 

Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful 
crank 



THE MAN FROM ELDORADO 70 

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived 
in town, 

/ 

• MY FRIENDS 78 

The man above was a murderer, the man below was 
a thief; 

THE PROSPECTOR 82 

I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety- 
eight, 

THE BLACK SHEEP 88 

Hark to the ewe that bore him: 

THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR 93 

I will not wash my face; 

THE WOOD-CUTTER 97 

The sky is like an envelope, 

THE SONG OF THE MOUTH-ORGAN. . . . 101 

I'm a homely little bit of tin and bone; 
8 



CONTENTS 

THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT 105 

Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We 
sprang from our stools. 

THE BALLAD OF GUM-BOOT BEN 114 

He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and 
dim. 

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE. .119 

In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain and 
clear 

LOST ....129 

"Black is the sky, but the land is white — 

L'ENVOI ..136 

We talked of yesteryears, of trails and treasure, 



TO THE MAN OF THE HIGH NORTH 

My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming 
Tve drifted, silver -sailed, on seas of dream, 

Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming, 
Seeing the groves of Arcadie a gleam. 

I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices 
From peak snow-diademed to regal star; 

Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices, 

The pregnant voices of the Things That Are. 

The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us; 

The gold -delirium, the ferine strife; 
The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us; 

Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life. 

The nameless men who nameless rivers travel, 
And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone; 

The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel 
The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone. 

These will I sing, and if one of you linger 
Over my pages in the Long, Long Night, 

And on some lone line lay a calloused finger, 
Saying: "It's human-true — it hits me right;" 

Then will I count this loving toil well spent; 

Then will I dream awhile — content, content. 

ii 



MEN OF THE HIGH NORTH 



Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing; 

Islands of opal float on silver seas; 
Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing; 

Pale ports of amber, golden argosies. 
Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing; 

Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky; 
Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing, 

Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye. 

Men of the High North, you who have known it; 

You in whose hearts its splendors have abode; 
Can you renounce it, can you disown it? 

Can you forget it, its glory and its goad? 
Where is the hardship, where is the pain of it? 

Lost in the limbo of things you've forgot; 
Only remain the guerdon and gain of it; 

Zest of the foray, and God, how you fought 1 

12 



MEN OF THE HIGH NORTH 

You who have made good, you foreign faring; 

You money magic to far lands has whirled; 
Can you forget those days of vast daring, 

There with your soul on the Top o' the World? 
Nights when no peril could keep you awake on 

Spruce boughs you spread for your couch in 
the snow; 
Taste all your feasts like the beans and the bacon 

Fried at the camp-fire at forty below? 



Can you remember your huskies all going, 

Barking with joy and their brushes in air; 
You in your parka, glad-eyed and glowing, 

Monarch, your subjects the wolf and the bear? 
Monarch, your kingdom unravisht and gleaming; 

Mountains your throne, and a river your car; 
Crash of a bull moose to rouse you from dreaming; 

Forest your couch, and your candle a star. 



You who this faint day the High North is luring 

Unto her vastness, taintlessly sweet; 
You who are steel-braced, straight-lipped, enduring, 

Dreadless in danger and dire in defeat: 
Honor the High North ever and ever, 

Whether she crown you, or whether she slay; 
Suffer her fury, cherish and love her — 

He who would rule he must learn to obey. 

13 



MEN OF THE HIGH NORTH 

Men of the High North, fierce mountains love you; 

Proud rivers leap when you ride on their breast. 
See, the austere sky, pensive above you, 

Dons all her jewels to smile on your rest. 
Children of Freedom, scornful of frontiers, 

We who are weaklings honor your worth. 
Lords of the wilderness, Princes of Pioneers, 

Let's have a rouse that will ring round the 
earth. 



14 



THE BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN 
LIGHTS 

One of the Down and Out — that's me. Stare at 
me well, ay, stare! 

Stare and shrink — say! you wouldn't think that 
I was a millionaire. 

Look at my face, it's crimped and gouged — one of 
them death-mask things; 

Don't seem the sort of man, do I, as might be the 
pal of kings? 

Slouching along in smelly rags, a bleary-eyed, no- 
good bum; 

A knight of the hollow needle, pard, spewed from 
the sodden slum. 

Look me all over from head to foot; how much 
would you think I was worth? 

A dollar? a dime? a nickel? Why, Tm the wealth- 
iest man on earth. 

No, don't you think that I'm off my base. You'll 

sing a different tune 
If only you'll let me spin my yarn. Come over to 

this saloon; 

15 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

Wet my throat — it's as dry as chalk, and seeing as 

how it's you, 
I'll tell the tale of a Northern trail, and so help me 

God, it's true. 
I'll tell of the howling wilderness and the haggard 

Arctic heights, 
Of a reckless vow that I made, and how / staked 

the Northern Lights. 

Remember the year of the Big Stampede and the 

trail of Ninety-eight, 
When the eyes of the world were turned to the 

North, and the hearts of men elate; 
Hearts of the old dare-devil breed thrilled at the 

wondrous strike, 
And to every man who could hold a pan came the 

message, "Up and hike." 
Well, I was there with the best of them, and I knew 

I would not fail. 
You wouldn't believe it to see me now; but wait 

till you've heard my tale. 

You've read of the trail of Ninety-eight, but its 

woe no man may tell; 
It was all of a piece and a whole yard wide, and the 

name of the brand was "Hell." 
We heard the call and we staked our all; we wer; 

plungers playing blind, 

16 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHT; 

And no man cared how his neighbor fared, and no 

man looked behind; 
For a ruthless greed was born of need, and the 

weakling went to the wall, 
And a curse might avail where a prayer would fail, 

and the gold lust crazed us all. 



Bold were we, and they called us three the "Unholy 

Trinity; " 
There was Ole Olson, the sailor Swede, and the 

Dago Kid and me. 
We were the discards of the pack, the foreloopers 

of Unrest, 
Reckless spirits of fierce revolt in the ferment of 

the West. 
We were bound to win and we revelled in the hard- 
ships of the way. 
We staked our ground and our hopes were crowned, 

and we hoisted out the pay. 
We were rich in a day beyond our dreams, it was 

gold from the grass-roots down; 
But we weren't used to such sudden wealth, and 

there was the siren town. 
We were crude and careless frontiersmen, with 

much in us of the beast; 
We could bear the famine worthily, but we lost our 

heads at the feast. 

17 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

The town looked mighty bright to us, with a bunch 

of dust to spend, 
And nothing was half too good them days, and 

everyone was our friend. 
Wining meant more than mining then, and life was 

a dizzy whirl, 
Gambling and dropping chunks of gold down the 

neck of a dance-hall girl; 
Till we went clean mad, it seems to me, and we 

squandered our last poke, 
And we sold our claim, and we found ourselves one 

bitter morning — broke. 



The Dago Kid he dreamed a dream of his mother's 

aunt who died — 
In the dawn-light dim she came to him, and she 

stood by his bedside, 
And she said: "Go forth to the highest North till 

a lonely trail ye find; 
Follow it far and trust your star, and fortune will 

be kind." 
But I jeered at him, and then there came the Sailor 

Swede to me, 
And he said: "I dreamed of my sister's son, who 

croaked at the age of three. 
From the herded dead he sneaked and said : ' Seek 

you an Arctic trail; 

18 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

'Tis pale and grim by the Polar rim, but seek and 

ye shall not fail.' " 
And lo! that night I too did dream of my mother s 

sister's son, 
And he said to me: "By the Arctic Sea there's a 

treasure to be won. 
Follow and follow a lone moose trail, till you come 

to a valley grim, 
On the slope of the lonely watershed that borders 

the Polar brim." 
Then I woke my pals, and soft we swore by the 

mystic Silver Flail, 
Twas the hand of Fate, and to-morrow straight 

we would seek the lone moose trail. 



We watched the groaning ice wrench free, crash on 

with a hollow din; 
Men of the wilderness were we, freed from the 

taint of sin. 
The mighty river snatched us up and it bore us 

swift along; 
The days were bright, and the morning light was 

sweet with jewelled song. 
We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged 

o'er hill and plain; 
We burnt our boat to save the nails, and built our 

boat again; 

19 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

We guessed and groped, North, ever North, with 

many a twist and turn ; 
We saw ablaze in the deathless days the splendid 

sunsets burn. 
O'er soundless lakes where the grayling makes a 

rush at the clumsy fly; 
By bluffs so steep that the hard-hit sheep falls 

sheer from out the sky; 
By lilied pools where the bull moose cools and wal- 
lows in huge content; 
By rocky lairs where the pig-eyed bears peered at 

our tiny tent. 
Through the black canyon's angry foam we 

hurled to dreamy bars, 
And round in a ring the dog-nosed peaks bayed to 

the mocking stars. 
Spring and summer and autumn went; the »ky 

had a tallow gleam, 
Vet North and ever North we pressed to the land 

of our Golden Dream. 



So we came at last to a tundra vast and dark and 

grim and lone; 
And there was the little lone moose trail, and we 

knew it for our own. 
By muskeg hollow and nigger-head it wandered 

endlessly ; 

29 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

Sorry of heart and sore of foot, weary men were 

we. 
The short-lived sun had a leaden glare and the 

darkness came too soon, 
And stationed there with a solemn stare was the 

pinched, anaemic moon. 
Silence and silvern solitude till it made you dumbly 

shrink, 
And you thought to hear with an outward ear the 

things you thought to think. 



Oh, it was wild and weird and wan, and ever in 

camp o' nights 
We would watch and watch the silver dance of the 

mystic Northern Lights. 
And soft they danced from the Polar sky and swept 

in primrose haze; 
And swift they pranced with their silver feet, and 

pierced with a blinding blaze. 
They danced a cotillion in the sky; they were rose 

and silver shod; 
It was not good for the eyes of man — 'twas a sight 

for the eyes of God. 
It made us mad and strange and sad, and the gold 

whereof we dreamed 
Was all forgot, and our only thought was of the 

lights that gleamed. 

21 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

Oh, the tundra sponge it was golden brown, and 
some was a bright blood-red; 

And the reindeer moss gleamed here and there like 
the tombstones of the dead. 

And in and out and around about the little trail 
ran clear, 

And we hated it with a deadly hate and we feared 
with a deadly fear. 

And the skies of night were alive with light, with a 
throbbing, thrilling flame; 

Amber and rose and violet, opal and gold it came. 

It swept the sky like a giant scythe, it quivered 
back to a wedge; 

Argently bright, it cleft the night with a wavy 
golden edge. 

Pennants of silver waved and streamed, lazy ban- 
ners unfurled; 

Sudden splendors of sabres gleamed, lightning 
javelins were hurled. 

There in our awe we crouched and saw with our 
wild, uplifted eyes 

Charge and retire the hosts of fire in the battle- 
field of the skies. 



But all things come to an end at last, and the 

muskeg melted away, 
And frowning down to bar our path a muddle of 

mountains lay. 

22 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

And a gorge sheered up in granite walls, and the 

moose trail crept betwixt; 
'Twas as if the earth had gaped too far and her 

stony jaws were fixt. 
Then the winter fell with a sudden swoop, and the 

heavy clouds sagged low, 
And earth and sky were blotted out in a whirl of 

driving snow. 

We were climbing up a glacier in the neck of a 

mountain pass, 
When the Dago Kid slipped down and fell into a 

deep crevasse. 
When we got him out one leg hung limp, and his 

brow was wreathed with pain, 
And he says: "'Tis badly broken, boys, and I'll 

never walk again. 
It's death for all if ye linger here, and that's no 

cursed lie; 
Go on, go on while the trail is good, and leave me 

down to die." 
He raved and swore, but we tended him with our 

uncouth, clumsy care. 
The camp-fire gleamed and he gazed and dreamed 

with a fixed and curious stare. 
Then all at once he grabbed my gun and he put 

it to his head, 
And he says: "I'll fix it for you, boys" — them are 

the words he said. 

23 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

So we sewed him up in a canvas sack and we slung 

him to a tree; 
And the stars like needles stabbed our eyes, and 

woeful men were we. 
And on we went on our woeful way, wrapped in a 

daze of dream, 
And the Northern Lights in the crystal nights 

came forth with a mystic gleam. 
They danced and they danced the devil-dance over , 

the naked snow; 
And soft they rolled like a tide upshoaled with a 

ceaseless ebb and flow. 
They rippled green with a wondrous sheen, they 

fluttered out like a fan; 
They spread with a blaze of rose-pink rays never 

yet seen of man. 
They writhed like a brood of angry snakes, hissing 

and sulphur pale; 
Then swift they changed to a dragon vast, lashing 

a cloven tail. 
It seemed to us, as we gazed aloft with an ever- 
lasting stare, 
The sky was a pit of bale and dread, and a monster 

revelled there. 

We climbed the rise of a hog-back range that was 

desolate and drear, 
When the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got 

to talking queer. 

24 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach 

trees all in bloom, 
\nd the fern head -high, and the topaz sky, and the 

forest's scented gloom. 
He talked of the sins of his misspent life, and then 

he seemed to brood, 
And I watched him there like a fox a hare, for I 

knew it was not good. 
And sure enough in the dim dawn-light I missed 

him from the tent, 
And a fresh trail broke through the crusted snow, 

and I knew not where it went. 
But I followed it o'er the seamless waste, and I 

found him at shut of day, 
Naked there as a new-born babe — so I left him 

where he lay. 

Day after day was sinister, and I fought fierce-eyed 

despair, 
And I clung to life, and I struggled on, I knew not 

why nor where. 
I packed my grub in short relays, and I cowered 

down in my tent, 
And the world around was purged of sound like a 

frozen continent. 
Day after, day was dark as death, but ever and 

ever at nights, 
With a brilliancy that grew and grew, blazed up 

the Northern Lights. 

25 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

They rolled around with a soundless sound like 

softly bruised silk; 
They poured into the bowl of the sky with the 

gentle flow of milk. 
In eager, pulsing violet their wheeling chariots 

came, 
Or they poised above the Polar rim like a coronal 

of flame. 
From depths of darkness fathomless their lancing 

rays were hurled, 
Like the all-combining search-lights of the navies 

of the world. 
There on the roof-pole of the world as one be- 
witched I gazed, 
And howled and grovelled like a beast as the awful 

splendors blazed. 
My eyes were seared, yet thralled I peered through 

the parka hood nigh blind ; 
But I staggered on to the lights that shone, and 

never I looked behind. 

There is a mountain round and low that lies by 

the Polar rim, 
And I climbed its height in a whirl of light, and I 

peered o'er its jagged brim; 
And there in a crater deep and vast, ungained, 

unguessed of men, 
The mystery of the Arctic world was flashed into 

my ken. 

26 



BALLAB OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

For there these poor dim eyes of mine beheld the 

sight of sights — 
That hollow ring was the source and spring of the 

mystic Northern Lights. 

Then I staked that place from crown to base, and 

I hit the homeward trail. 
Ah, God! it was good, though my eyes were blurred, 

and I crawled like a sickly snail. 
In that vast white world where the silent sky 

communes with the silent snow, 
In hunger and cold and misery I wandered to and 

fro. 
But the Lord took pity on my pain, and He led me 

to the sea, 
And some ice-bound whalers heard my moan, and 

they fed and sheltered me. 
They fed the feeble scarecrow thing that stumbled 

out of the wild 
With the ravaged face of a mask of death and the 

wandering wits of a child — 
A craven, cowering bag of bones that once had been 

a man. 
They tended me and they brought me back to the 

world, and here I am. 

Some say that the Northern Lights are the glare 
of the Arctic ice and snow; 

27 



BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

And some that it's electricity, and nobody seems 

to know. 
But I'll tell you now — and if I lie, may my lips be 

stricken dumb — 
It's a mine, a mine of the precious stuff that men 

call radium. 
It's a million dollars a pound, they say, and there's 

tons and tons in sight. 
You can see it gleam in a golden stream in the 

solitudes of night. 
And it's mine, all mine — and say! if you have a 

hundred plunks to spare, 
I'll let you have the chance of your life, I'll sell 

you a quarter share. 
You turn it down? Well, I'll make it ten, seeing 

as you are my friend. 
Nothing doing? Say! don't be hard — have you 

got a dollar to lend? 
Just a dollar to help me out, I know you'll treat me 

white ; 
I'll do as much for you some day . . . God 

bless you, sir; good-night. 






28 



THE BALLAD OF THE BLACK VOX 
SKIN 

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike 

living the life of shame, 
When unto them in the Long, Long Night came 

the man-who-had-no-name; 
Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of the Wild 

he came. 

His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head foam 
when the brown spring freshets flow; 

Deep in their dark, sin-calcined pits were his sombre 
eyes aglow; 

They knew him far for the fitful man who spat 
forth blood on the snow. 

" Did ever you see such a skin?" quoth he; "there's 

nought in the world so fine — 
Such fullness of fur as black as the night, such 

lustre, such size, such shine; 
It's life to a one-lunged man like me; it's London, 

it's women, it's wine. 

29 



BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN 

"The Moose-hides called it the devil-fox, and 

swore that no man could kill; 
That he who hunted it, soon or late, must surely 

suffer some ill; 
But I laughed at them and their old squaw-tales. 

Ha! Ha! I'm laughing still. 

" For look ye, the skin — it's as smooth as sin, and 

black as the core of the Pit. 
By gun or by trap, whatever the hap, I swore I 

would capture it; 
By star and by star afield and afar, I hunted and 

would not quit. 

"For the devil-fox, it was swift and sly, and it 

seemed to fleer at me; 
1 would wake in fright by the camp-fire light, 

hearing its evil glee; 
Into my dream its eyes would gleam, and its 

shadow would I see. 



"It sniffed and ran from the ptarmigan I had 

poisoned to excess; 
Unharmed it sped from my wrathful lead ('twas 

as if I shot by guess) ; 
Yet it came by night in the stark moonlight to 

mock at my weariness. 

30 



BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN 

"I tracked it up where the mountains hunch like 

the vertebrae of the world; 
I tracked it down to the death -still pits where the 

avalanche is hurled; 
From the glooms to the sacerdotal snows, where the 

carded clouds are curled. 



"From the vastitudes where the world protrudes 
through clouds like seas up-shoaled, 

I held its track till it led me back to the land I had 
left of old— 

The land I had looted many moons. I was weary 
and sick and cold. 

" I was sick, soul-sick, of the futile chase, and there 

and then I swore 
The foul fiend fox might scathless go, for I would 

hunt no more; 
Then I rubbed mine eyes in a vast surprise — it 

stood by my cabin door. 

*'A rifle raised in the wraith-like gloom, and a 

vengeful shot that sped; 
A howl that would thrill a cream-faced corpse — 

and the demon fox lay dead. . . . 
Yet there was never a sign of wound, and never a 

drop he bled. 

31 



BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN 

"So that was the end of the great black fox, and 

here is the prize I've won; 
And now for a drink to cheer me up — I've mushed 

since the early sun; 
We'll drink a toast to the sorry ghost of the fox 

whose race is run." 



II. 

Now Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike, bad as 

the worst were they; 
In their road-house down by the river-trail they 

waited and watched for prey; 
With wine and song they joyed night long, and 

they slept like swine by day. 

I For things were done in the Midnight Sun that nc 

tongue will ever tell; 
And men there be who walk earth-free, but whose 

names are writ in hell — 
Are writ in flames with the guilty names of Fournier 

and Labelle. 

Put not your trust in a poke of dust would ye sleep 

the sleep of sin ; 
For there be those who would rob your clothes ere 

yet the dawn comes in; 
And a prize likewise in a woman's eyes is a peerless 

black fox skin. 

32 



BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN 

Put your faith in the mountain cat if you lie within 

his lair; 
Trust the fangs of the mother-wolf, and the claws 

of the lead-ripped bear; 
But oh, of the wiles and the gold-tooth smiles of a 

dance-hall wench beware! 

Wherefore it was beyond all laws that lusts of man 

restrain, 
A man drank deep and sank to sleep never to wake 

again ; 
And the Yukon swallowed through a hole the cold 

corpse of the slain. 

III. 

The black fox skin a shadow cast from the roof nigh 

to the floor; 
And sleek it seemed and soft it gleamed, and the 

woman stroked it o'er; 
And the man stood by with a brooding eye, and 

gnashed his teeth and swore. 

When thieves and thugs fall out and fight there's 

fell arrears to pay; 
And soon or late sin meets its fate, and so it fell 

one day 
That Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike fangcd 

up like dogs at bay. 

33 



BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN 

"The skin is mine, all mine," she cried; "I did the 
deed alone." 

"It's share and share with a guilt-yoked pair," he 
hissed in a pregnant tone; 

And so they snarled like malamutes over a mil- 
dewed bone. 

And so they fought, by fear untaught, till haply it 

befell 
One dawn of day she slipped away to Dawson town 

to sell 
The fruit of sin, this black fox skin that had made 

their lives a hell. 

She slipped away as still he lay, she clutched the 

wondrous fur; 
Her pulses beat, her foot was fleet, her fear was as 

a spur; 
She laughed with glee, she did not see him rise 

and follow her. 



The bluffs uprear and grimly peer far over Dawson 

town; 
They see its lights a blaze o' nights and harshly 

they look down; 
They mock the plan and plot of man with grim. 

ironic frown. 

34 






BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN 

The trail was steep; 'twas at the time when swiftly 

sinks the snow; 
All honey-combed, the river ice was rotting down 

below ; 
The river chafed beneath its rind with many a 

mighty throe. 

And up the swift and oozy drift a woman climbed 

in fear, 
Clutching to her a black fox fur as if she held it 

dear; 
And hard she pressed it to her breast — then Windy 

Ike drew near. 

She made no moan — her heart was stone — she read 

his smiling face, 
And like a dream flashed all her life's dark horror 

and disgrace; 
A moment only — with a snarl he hurled her into 

space. 

She rolled for nigh an hundred feet; she bounded 

like a ball; 
From crag to crag she carromed down through snow 

and timber fall; . . . 
A hole gaped in the river ice; the spray flashed — 

that was all. 

35 



BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN 

^ bird sang for the joy of spring, so piercing sweet 

and frail; 
And blinding bright the land was dight in gay and 

glittering mail; 
And with a wondrous black fox skin a man slid 

down the trail. 



IV. 

A wedge-faced man there was who ran along the 

river bank, 
Who stumbled through each drift and slough, and 

ever slipped and sank, 
And ever cursed his Maker's name, and ever 

"hooch" he drank. 

He travelled like a hunted thing, hard harried, sore 
distrest ; 

The old grandmother moon crept out from her 
cloud-quilted nest; 

The aged mountains mocked at him in their prim- 
eval rest. 

Grim shadows diapered the snow; the air was 

strangely mild ; 
The valley's girth was dumb with mirth, the 

laughter of the wild ; 
The still, sardonic laughter of an ogre o'er a child. 

36 






BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN 

The river writhed beneath the ice; it groaned like 

one in pain, 
And yawning chasms opened wide, and closed and 

yawned again; 
And sheets of silver heaved on high until they split 

in twain 

From out the road-house by the trail they saw a 

man afar 
Make for the narrow river-reach where the swift 

cross-currents are; 
Where, frail and worn, the ice is torn and the angry 

waters jar. 

But they did not see him crash and sink into the 

icy flow; 
They did not see him clinging there, gripped by 

the undertow, 
Clawing with bleeding finger-nails at the jagged 

ice and snow. 



They found a note beside the hole where he had 

stumbled in: 
"Here met his fate by evil luck a man who lived 

in sin, 
And to the one who loves me least I leave this 

black fox skin." 

37 



BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN 

And strange it is; for, though they searched the 

river all around, 
No trace or sign of black fox skin was ever after 

found ; 
Though one man said he saw the tread of hoofs 

deep in the ground. 



38 



THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE 

"The North has got him." — Yukonism. 

I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to 

God, I did. 
I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched 

over him like a kid. 
I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way 

that I could; 
I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail; I plotted 

and planned for his good. 
By day and by night I strove in men's sight t© 

gather him into the fold, 
With precept and prayer, with hope and despair, in 

hunger and hardship and cold. 
I followed him into Gehennas of sin, I sat where 

the sirens sit; 
In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul, I 

strove with the powers of the Pit. 
I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town; I 

dragged him from dissolute brawls; 
But I killed the galoot when he started to shoot 

electricity into my walls. 

39 



THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE 

God knows what I did he should seek to be rid of 

one who would save him from shame. 
God knows what I bore that night when he swore 

and bade me make tracks from his claim. 
I started to tell of the horrors of hell, when sudden 

his eyes lit like coals; 
And "Chuck it," says he, "don't persecute me with 

your cant and your saving of souls." 
I'll swear I was mild as I'd be with a child, but he 

called me the son of a slut; 
And, grabbing his gun with a leap and a run, he 

threatened my face with the butt. 
So what could I do (I leave it to you) ? With curses 

he harried me forth; 
Then he was alone, and I was alone, and over us 

menaced the North. 



Our cabins were near; I could see, I could hear, 

but between us there rippled the creek; 
And all summer through, with a rancor that grew, 

he would pass me and never would speak. 
Then a shuddery breath like the coming of Death 

crept down from the peaks far away; 
The water was still; the twilight was chill; the sky 

was a tatter of gray. 
Swift came the Big Cold, and opal and gold the 

lights of the witches arose; 

40 



THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE 

The frost-tyrant clinched, and the valley was 

cinched by the stark and cadaverous snows. 
The trees were like lace where the star-beams 

could chase, each leaf was a jewel agleam. 
The soft white hush lapped the Northland and 

wrapped us round in a crystalline dream; 
So still I could hear quite loud in my ear the swish 

of the pinions of time; 
So bright I could see, as plain as could be, the wings 

of God's angels ashine. 



As I read in the Book I would oftentimes look, to 

that cabin just over the creek. 
Ah me, it was sad and evil and bad, two neighbors 

who never would speak! 
I knew that full well like a devil in hell he was 

hatching out, early and late, 
A system to bear through the frost-spangled air 

the warm, crimson waves of his hate. 
I only could peer and shudder and fear — 'twas 

ever so ghastly and still; 
But I knew over there in his lonely despair he was 

plotting me terrible ill. 
I knew that he nursed a malice accurst, like the 

blast of a winnowing flame; 
I pleaded aloud for a shield, for a shroud — Oh, 

God! then calamity came. 

4i 



THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE 

Mad! If I'm mad then you too are mad; but it's 

all in the point of view. 
If you'd looked at them things gallivantin' on 

wings, all purple and green and blue; 
If you'd noticed them twist, as they mounted and 

hissed like scorpions dim in the dark; 
If you'd seen them rebound with a horrible sound, 

and spitefully spitting a spark; 
If you'd watched It with dread, as it hissed by your 

bed, that thing with the feelers that crawls — 
You'd have settled the brute that attempted to 

shoot electricity into your walls. 



Oh, some they were blue, and they slithered right 
through; they were silent and squashy and 
round ; 

And some they were green ; they were wriggly and 
lean; they writhed with so hateful a sound. 

My blood seemed to freeze; I fell on my knees; 
my face was a white splash of dread. 

Oh, the Green and the Blue, they were gruesome to 
view; but the worst of them all were the Red. 

They came through the door, they came through 
the floor, they came through the moss- 
creviced logs. 

They were savage and dire; they were whiskered 
with fire; they bickered like malamute dogs. 

42 



THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE 

fhey ravined in rings like iniquitous things; they 
gulped down the Green and the Blue. 

I crinkled with fear whene'er they drew near, and 
nearer and nearer they drew. 



And then came the crown of Horror's grim crown, 
the monster so loathsomely red. 

Each eye was a pin that shot out and in, as, squid- 
like, it oozed to my bed; 

So softly it crept with feelers that swept and quiv- 
ered like fine copper wire; 

Its belly was white with a sulphurous light, its 
jaws were a-drooling with fire. 

It came and it came; I could breathe of its flame, 
but never a wink could I look. 

I thrust in its maw the Fount of the Law; I fended 
it off with the Book. 

I was weak — oh, so weak — but I thrilled at its 
shriek, as wildly it fled in the night; 

And deathlike I lay till the dawn of the day. (Was 
ever so welcome the light?) 



I loaded my gun at the rise of the sun ; to his cabin 

so softly I slunk. 
My neighbor was there in the frost-freighted air, 

all wrapped in a robe in his bunk. 

43 



THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE 

It muffled his moans; it outlined his bones, as 

feebly he twisted about; 
His gums were so black, and his lips seemed to 

crack, and his teeth all were loosening out. 
'Twas a death's head that peered through the 

tangle of beard; 'twas a face I will never 

forget ; 
Sunk eyes full of woe, and they troubled me so 

with their pleadings and anguish, and yet 
As I rested my gaze in a misty amaze on the 

scurvy-degenerate wreck, 
I thought of the Things with the dragon-fly wings, 

then laid I my gun on his neck. 
He gave out a cry that was faint as a sigh, like a 

perishing malamute, 
And he says unto me, "I'm converted," says he; 

"for Christ's sake, Peter, don't shoot!" 



They're taking me out with an escort about, and 

under a sergeant's care; 
I am tumbled indeed, for I'm 'cuffed to a Swede 

that thinks he's a millionaire. 
But it's all Gospel true what I'm telling to you — 

up there where the Shadow falls — 
That I settled Sam Noot when he started to shoot 

electricity into my walls, 



44 



THE BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS 
BILL 

I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous 

Bill MacKie, 
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of 

death he die — 
Whether he die in the light o* day or under the 

peak-faced moon; 
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks 

or patent shoon; 
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift 

or draw ; 
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, 

fang or claw; 
By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, 

hooch or lead — 
I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I 

found my tombless dead. 

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind 
was mighty sot 

On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civil- 
ized bone-yard lot. 

45 



BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL 

And where he died or how he died, it didn't matter 
a damn 

So long as he had a grave with frills and a tomb- 
stone "epigram." 

So I promised him, and he paid the price in good 
cheechako coin 

(Which the same I blowed in that very night down 
in-the Tenderloin). 

Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here 
lies poor Bill MacKie," 

And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited 
for Bill to die. 

Years passed away, and at last one day came a 

squaw with a story strange, 
Of a long-deserted line of traps 'way back of the 

Bighorn range; 
Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man 

stiff and still, 
Lying there by his lonesome self, and I figured it 

must be Bill. 
So I thought of the contract I'd made with him, 

and I took down from the shelf 
The swell black box with the silver plate he'd picked 

out for hisself ; 
And I packed it full of grub and "hooch," and I 

slung it on the sleigh; 
Then I harnessed up my team of dogs and was off 

at dawn of day. 

46 



BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL 

Vou know what it's like in the Yukon wild when 

it's sixty-nine below; 
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads 

through the crust of the pale blue snow; 
When the pine-trees crack like little guns in the 

silence of the wood, 
And the icicles hang down like tusks under the 

parka hood; 
When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and 

the sky is weirdly lit, 
And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a 

red-hot spit; 
When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost- 
fiend stalks to kill — 
Well, it was just like that that day when I set out 

to look for Bill. 

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down 

on every hand, 
As I blundered blind with a trail to find through 

that blank and bitter land; 
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its 

grim heart-breaking woes, 
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only 

the sourdough knows! 
North by the compass, North I pressed; river and 

peak and plain 
Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I waked to 

dream again 



BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL 

River and plain and mighty peak — and who could 

stand una wed ? 
As their summits blazed, he could stand r.ndazed 

at the foot of the throne of God. 
North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned 

by the scouring brutes, 
And all I heard was my own harsh word and the 

whine of the malamutes, 
Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side 

of a hill, 
And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, 

frozen to death, lay Bill. 

Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each 

smoke-grimed wall; 
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming 

over all; 
Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest, glittering 

ice in his hair, 
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy 

stare ; 
Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, with his arms 

and legs outspread. 
I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him, and I 

gazed at the gruesome dead, 
And at last I spoke: "Bill liked his joke; but still, 

goldarn his eyes, 
A man had ought to consider his mates in the way 

he goes and dies." 
48 



BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL 

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow 

of the Pole, 
With a little coffin six by three and a grief you 

can't control? 
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks 

at you with a grin, 
And that seems to say: "You may try all day, but 

you'll never jam me in?" 
I'm not a man of the quitting kind, but I never 

felt so blue 
As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying 

what I'd do. 
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that 

were nosing round about, 
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I started 

to thaw Bill out. 

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but 

it didn't seem no good; 
His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they 

was made of wood. 
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use — he's froze too 

hard to thaw; 
He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight, so I guess 

I got to — saio." 
So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs, and I laid 

him snug and straight 
In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the dinky 

silver plate; 

49 



BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL 

And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed 

him safely down; 
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and 

I started back to town. 

So I buried him as the contract was in a narrow 

grave and deep, 
And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up, when 

the Judgment sluice-heads sweep; 
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of 

the Midnight Sun, 
And sometimes I wonder if they was, the awful 

things I done. 
And as I sit and the parson talks, expounding of 

the Law, 
I often think of poor old Bill — and how hard he was 

to saw. 



5o 



THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE 

This is the tale that was told to me by the man with 

the crystal eye, 
As I smoked my pipe in the camp-fire light, and the 

Glories swept the sky; 
As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed, 

and the bottle of "hooch" was dry. 

A man once aimed that my life be shamed, and 

wrought me a deathly wrong; 
I vowed one day I would well repay, but the heft 

of his hate was strong. 
He thonged me East and he thonged me West ; he 

harried me back and forth, 
Till I fled in fright from his peerless spite to the 

bleak, bald-headed North. 

And there I lay, and for many a day I hatched plan 

after plan, 
For a golden haul of the wherewithal to crush and 

to kill my man; 

51 



THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE 

And there I strove, and there I clove through the 

drift of icy streams; 
And there I fought, and there I sought for the pay 

streak of my dreams. 

So twenty years, with their hopes and fears and 

smiles and tears and such, 
Went by and left me long bereft of hope of the 

Midas touch; 
About as fat as a chancel rat, and lo! despite my 

will, 
In the weary fight I had clean lost sight of the man 

I sought to kill. 

'Twas so far away, that evil day when I prayed 

the Prince of Gloom 
For the savage strength and the sullen length of 

life to work his doom. 
Nor sign nor word had I seen or heard, and it 

happed so long ago; 
My youth was gone and my memory wan, and I 

willed it even so. 

It fell one night in the waning light by the Yukon's 

oily flow, 
I smoked and sat as I marvelled at the sky's port- 

winey glow; 

52 



THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE 

Till it paled away to an absinthe gray, and the 

river seemed to shrink, 
All wobbly flakes and wriggling snakes and goblin 

eyes a-wink. 

'Twas weird to see and it 'wildered me in a queer, 

hypnotic dream, 
Till I saw a spot like an inky blot come floating 

down the stream; 
It bobbed and swung; it sheered and hung; it 

romped round in a ring; 
It seemed to play in a tricksome way; it sure was 

a merry thing. 

In freakish flights strange oily lights came fluttering 

round its head, 
Like butterflies of a monster size — then I knew it 

for the Dead. 
Its face was rubbed and slicked and scrubbed as 

smooth as a shaven pate; 
In the silver snakes that the water makes it gleamed 

like a dinner-plate. 

It gurgled near, and clear and clear and large and 

large it grew; 
It stood upright in a ring of light and it looked me 

through and through. 

53 



THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE 

It weltered round with a woozy sound, and ere I 

could retreat. 
With the witless roll of a sodden soul it wantoned 

to my feet. 

And here I swear by this Cross I wear, I heard that 

"floater" say: 
"I am the man from whom you ran, the man you 

sought to slay. 
That you may note and gaze and gloat, and say 

'Revenge is sweet,' 
In the grit and grime of the river's slin.e I am 

rotting at your feet. 

"The ill we rue we must e'en undo, though it rive 

us bone from bone; 
So it came about that I sought you out, for I prayed 

I might atone. 
I did you wrong, and for long and long I sought 

where you might live; 
And now you're found, though I'm dead and 

drowned, I beg you to forgive." 

So sad it seemed, and its cheek-bones gleamed „ 
and its fingers flicked the shore; 

And it lapped and lay in a weary way, and its hands 
met to implore; 

54 






THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE 

That I gently said: "Poor, restless dead, I would 

never work you woe; 
Though the wrong you rue you can ne'er undo, 

I forgave you long ago." 

Then, wonder-wise, I rubbed my eyes and I woke 
from a horrid dream. 

The moon rode high in the naked sky, and some- 
thing bobbed in the stream. 

It held my sight in a patch of light, and then it 
sheered from the shore; 

It dipped and sank by a hollow bank, and I never 
saw it more. 

This was the tale he told to me, that man so warped 

and gray, 
Ere he slept and dreamed, and the camp-fire gleamed 

in his eye in a wolfish way — 
That crystal eye that raked the sky in the weird 

Auroral ray. 



55 



THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND 

Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where 

women were far and rare, 
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden 

amazingly fair; 
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy 

of hand, 
Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the 

tribe of a Southern land; 
Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother 

him little ones, 
That the name of Tellus, the master smith, might 

live in his stalwart sons. 

Now there was little of law in the land, and evil 

doings were rife, 
And every man who joyed in his home guarded the 

fame of his wife 
For there were those of the silver tongue and the 

honeyed art to beguile, 
Who would cozen the heart from a woman's breast 

and damn her soul with a smile. 

556 



THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND 

And there were women too quick to heed a look 

or a whispered word, 
And once in a while a man was slain, and the ire 

of the King was stirred ; 
So far and wide he proclaimed his wrath, and this 

was the law he willed : 
"That whosoever killeth a man, even shall he be 

killed." 



Now Tellus, the smith, he trusted his wife; his 

heart was empty of fear. 
High on the hill was the gleam of their hearth, a 

beacon of love and cheer. 
High on the hill they builded their bower, where 

the broom and the bracken meet; 
Under a grave of oaks it was, hushed and drowsily 

sweet. 
Here he enshrined her, his dearest saint, his idol, 

the light of his eye; 
Her kisses rested upon his lips as brushes a* butterfly. 
The weight of her arms around his neck was light 

as the thistle down; 
And sweetly she studied to win his smile, and gently 

she mocked his frown. 
And when at the close of the dusty day his clang- 
orous toil was done, 
She hastened to meet him down the way all lit by 

the amber sun. 

57 



THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND 

Their dove-cot gleamed in the golden light, a 

temple of stainless love; 
Like the hanging cup of a big blue flower was the 

topaz sky above. 
The roses and lilies yearned to her, as swift through 

their throng she pressed; 
A little white, fragile, fluttering thing that lay like 

a child on his breast. 
Then the heart of Tellus, the smith, was proud, and 

sang for the joy of life, 
And there in the bronzing summertide he thanked 

the gods for his wife. 

Now there was one called Philo, a scribe, a man of 

exquisite grace, 
Carved like the god Apollo in limb, fair as Adonis 

in face; 
Eager and winning of manner, full of such radiant 

charm, 
Womenkind fought for his favor and loved to their 

uttermost harm. 
Such was his craft and his knowledge, such was his 

skill at the game, 
Never was woman could flout him, so be he plotted 

her shame. 
And so he drank deep of pleasure, and then it fell 

on a day 
He gazed on the wife of Tellus and marked her 

out for his prey. 

5S 



THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND 

Tellus, the smith, was merry, and the time of the 

year it was June, 
So he said to his stalwart helpers: "Shut down 

the forge at noon. 
Go ye and joy in the sunshine, rest in the coolth of 

the grove, 
Drift on the dreamy river, every man with his love." 
Then to himself: "Oh, Beloved, sweet will be your 

surprise; 
To-day will we sport like children, laugh in each 

other's eyes; 
Weave gay garlands of poppies, crown each other 

with flowers, 
Pull plump carp from the lilies, rifle the ferny 

bowers. 
To-day with feasting and gladness the wine of 

Cyprus will flow; 
To-day is the day we were wedded only a twelve- 
month ago." 

The larks trilled high in the heavens ; his heart was 

lyric with joy; 
He plucked a posy of lilies; he sped like a love-sick 

boy. 
He stole up the velvety pathway — his cottage was 

sunsteeped and still; 
Vines honeysuckled the window; softly he peeped 

o'er the sill. 

59 



THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND 






The lilies dropped from his fingers; devils were 

choking his breath; 
Rigid with horror, he stiffened; ghastly his face 

was as death. 
Like a nun whose faith in the Virgin is met with 

a prurient jibe, 
He shrank — 'twas the wife of his bosom in the 

arms of Philo, the scribe. 

Tellus went back to his smithy; he reeled like a 
drunken man; 

His heart was riven with anguish; his brain was 
brooding a plan. 

Straight to his anvil he hurried ; started his furnace 
aglow ; 

Heated his iron and shaped it with savage and 
masterful blow. 

Sparks showered over and round him ; swiftly under 
his hand 

There at last it was finished — a hideous and in- 
famous Brand. 

That night the wife of his bosom, the light of joy 

in her eyes, 
Kissed him with words of rapture; but he knew 

that her words were lies. 
Never was she so beguiling, never so merry of 

speech 

60 



THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND 

(For passion ripens a woman as the sunshine 

ripens a peach). 
He clenched his teeth into silence; he yielded up 

to her lure, 
Though he knew that her breasts were heaving 

from the fire of her paramour. 
"To-morrow," he said, "to-morrow" — he wove 

her hair in a strand, 
Twisted it round his fingers and smiled as he 

thought of the Brand. 



The morrow was come, and Tellus swiftly stole up 

the hill. 
Butterflies drowsed in the noon-heat; coverts were 

sunsteeped and still. 
Softly he padded the pathway unto the porch, and 

within 
Heard he the low laugh of dalliance, heard he the 

rapture of sin. 
Knew he her eyes were mystic with light that no 

man should see, 
No man kindle and joy in, no man on earth save 

he. 
And never for him would it kindle. The blood- 
lust surged in his brain; 
Through the senseless stone could he see them, 

wanton and warily fain. 

61 



THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND 

Horrible! Heaven he sought for, gained it and 
gloried and fell — 

Oh, it was sudden — headlong into the nether- 
most hell. . . 



Was this he, Tellus, this marble? Tellus . . « 

not dreaming a dream? 
Ah! sharp-edged as a javelin, was that a woman's 

scream ? 
Was it a door that shattered, shell-like, under his 

blow? 
Was it his saint, that strumpet, dishevelled and 

cowering low? 
Was it her lover, that wild thing, that twisted and 

gouged and tore? 
Was it a man he was crushing, whose head he beat 

on the floor? 
Laughing the while at its weakness, till sudden 

he stayed his hand — 
Through the red ring of his madness flamed the 

thought of the Brand. 



Then bound he the naked Philo with thongs that 

cut in the flesh, 
And the wife of his bosom, fear-frantic, he gagged 

with a silken mesh, 

62 



THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND 

Choking her screams into silence; bound her down 

by the hair; 
Dragged her lover unto her under her frenzied 

stare. 
In the heat of the hearth- fire embers he heated the 

hideous Brand; 
Twisting her fingers open, he forced its haft in her 

hand. 
He pressed it downward and downward; she felt 

the living flesh sear; 
She saw the throe of her lover ; she heard the scream 

of his fear. 
Once, twice and thrice he forced her, heedless of 

prayer and shriek — 
Once on the forehead of Philo, twice in the soft of 

his cheek. 
Then (for the thing was finished) he said to the 

woman: "See 
How you have branded your lover! Now will I 

let him go free." 
He severed the thongs that bound him, laughing: 

" Revenge is sweet," 
And Philo, sobbing in anguish, feebly rose to his 

feet. 
The man who was fair as Apollo, god-like in 

woman's sight, 
Hideous now as a satyr, fled to the pity of night. 



63 



THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND 

Then came they before the Judgment Seat, and thus 

spoke the Lord of the Land: 
u He who seeketh his neighbor's wife shall suffer the 

doom of the Brand. 
Brutish and bold on his brow be it stamped, deep in 

his cheek let it sear, 
That every man may look on his shame, and shudder 

and sicken and fear. 
He shall hear their mock in the market-place, their 

Peering jibe at the feast; 
He shall seek the caves and the shroud of night, and 

the fellowship of the beast. 
Outcast forever from homes of men, far and far shall 

he roam. 
Such be the doom, sadder than death, of him whi 

shameth a home" 



04 



THE BALLAD OF HARD-LUCK 
HENRY 

Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful 

crank 
That's staked out nigh three hundred claims, and 

every one a blank; 
That's followed every fool stampede, and seen the 

rise and fall 
Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got 

none at all; 
That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for 

a song 
To see it yield a fortune to some fool that came 

along; 
That's sunk a dozen bed-rock holes, and not a speck 

in sight, 
Yet sees them take a million from the claims to 

left and right? 
Now aren't things like that enough to drive a man 

to booze? 
But Hard -Luck Smith was hoodoo-proof — he knew 

the way to lose. 

65 



BALLAD OF HARD LUCK HENRY 

'Twas in the fall of nineteen four — leap-year I've 

heard them say — 
When Hard-Luck came to Hunker Creek and took 

a hillside lay. 
And lo! as if to make amends for all the futile 

past, 
Late in the year he struck it rich, the real pay- 
streak at last. 
The riffles of his sluicing-box were choked with 

speckled earth, 
And night and day he worked that lay for all that 

he was worth. 
And when in chill December's gloom his lucky 

lease expired, 
He found that he had made a stake as big as he 

desired. 



One day while meditating on the waywardness of 

fate, 
He felt the ache of lonely man to find a fitting mate; 
A petticoated pard to cheer his solitary life, 
A woman with soft, soothing ways, a confidant, a 

wife. 
And while he cooked his supper on his little Yukon 

stove, 
He wished that he had staked a claim in Love's 

rich treasure-trove; 

66 



BALLAD OF HARD-LUCK HENRY 

When suddenly he paused and held aloft a Yukon 

egg, 
For there in pencilled letters was the magic name 

of Peg. 



You know these Yukon eggs of ours — some pink, 

some green, some blue — 
A dollar per, assorted tints, assorted flavors too. 
The supercilious cheechako might designate them 

high, 
But one acquires a taste for them and likes them 

by-and-by. 
Well, Hard-Luck Henry took this egg and held it 

to the light, 
And there was more faint pencilling that sorely 

taxed his sight. 
At last he made it out, and then the legend ran like 

this — 
"Will Klondike miner write to Peg, Plumhollow,, 

Squashville, Wis.?" 



That night he got to thinking of this far-off, un- 
known fair; 

It seemed so sort of opportune, an answer to his 
prayer. 

67 



BALLAD OF HARD-LUCK HENRY 

She flitted sweetly through his dreams, she haunted 

him by day, 
She smiled through clouds of nicotine, she cheered 

his weary way. 
At last he yielded to the spell; his course of love 

he set — 
Wisconsin his objective point; his object, Margaret, 



With every mile of sea and land his longing grew 

and grew. 
He practised all his pretty words, and these, I fear, 

were few. 
At last, one frosty evening, with a cold chill down 

his spine, 
He found himself before her house, the threshold 

of the shrine. 
His courage flickered to a spark, then glowed with 

sudden flame — 
He knocked; he heard a welcome word; she came 

— his goddess came. 
Oh, she was fair as any flower, and huskily he spoke: 
"I'm all the way from Klondike, with a mightv 

heavy poke. 
I'm looking for a lassie, one whose Christian name 

is Peg, 
Who sought a Klondike miner, and who wrote it 

on an egg." 

68 



BALLAD OF HARD-LUCK HENRY 

The lassie gazed at him a space, her cheeks grew 
rosy red ; 

She gazed at him with tear-bright eyes, then ten- 
derly she said: 

"Yes, lonely Klondike miner, it is true my name is 
Peg. 

It's also true I longed for you and wrote it on an 

egg- 
My heart went out to someone in that land of night 

and cold; 
But oh, I fear that Yukon egg must have been 

mighty old. 
I waited long, I hoped and feared ; you should have 

come before; 
I've been a wedded woman now for eighteen months 

or more. 
I'm sorry, since you've come so far, you ain't the 

one that wins; 
But won't you take a step inside — I'll let you see 

the twins." 



69 



THE MAN FROM ELDORADO 

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived 
in town, 
In moccasins and oily buckskin shirt. 
He's gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown ; 

He's greasy, and he smells of sweat and din. 
He sports a crop of whiskers that would shame a 
healthy hog; 
Hard work has racked his joints and stooped 
his back; 
He slops along the sidewalk followed by his yellow 
dog, 
But he's got a bunch of gold-dust in his sack. 

He seems a little wistful as he blinks at all the 
lights, 
And maybe he is thinking of his claim 
And the dark and dwarfish cabin where he lay and 
dreamed at nights, 
(Thank God, he'll never see the place again!) 

70 



THE MAN FROM ELDORADO 

Where he lived on tinned tomatoes, beef embalmed 
and sourdough bread, 
On rusty beans and bacon furred with mould; 
His stomach's out of kilter and his system full of 
lead, 
But it's over, and his poke is full of gold. 

He has panted at the windlass, he has loaded in the 
drift, 
He has pounded at the face of oozy clay; 
He has taxed himself to sickness, dark and damp 
and double shift, 
He has labored like a demon night and day. 
And now, praise God, it's over, and he seems to 
breathe again 
Of new-mown hay, the warm, wet, friendly loam; 
He sees a snowy orchard in a green and dimpling 
plain, 
And a little vine-clad cottage, and it's — Home. 



II. 

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's had a bite 
and sup, 
And he's met in with a drouthy friend or two ; 
He's cached away his gold-dust, but he's sort of 
bucking up, 
So he's kept enough to-night to see him through. 

71 



THE MAN FROM ELDORADO 

His eye is bright and genial, his tongue no longer 
lags; 

His heart is brimming o'er with joy and mirth; 
He may be far from savory, he may be clad in rags, 

But to-night he feels as if he owns the earth. 

Says he: "Boys, here is where the shaggy North 
and I will shake; 
I thought I'd never manage to get free. 
I kept on making misses; but at last I've got my 
stake ; 
There's no more thawing frozen muck for me. 
I am going to God's Country, where I'll live the 
simple life; 
I'll buy a bit of land and make a start; 
I'll carve a little homestead, and I'll win a little 
wife, 
And raise ten little kids to cheer my heart." 

They signified their sympathy by crowding to the 
bar; 
They bellied up three deep and drank his health. 
He shed a radiant smile around and smoked a rank 
cigar ; 
They wished him honor, happiness and wealth. 
They drank unto his wife to be — that unsuspecting 
maid; 
They drank unto his children half a score; 

72 



THE MAN FROM ELDORADO 

And when they got through drinking very ten- 
derly they laid 
The man from Eldorado on the floor. 

in. 

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's only start- 
ing in 
To cultivate a thousand-dollar jag. 
His poke is full of gold-dust and his heart is full of 
sin, 
And he's dancing with a girl called Muckluck Mag. 
She's as light as any fairy; she's as pretty as a peach; 

She's mistress of the witchcraft to beguile; 
There's sunshine in her manner, there is music in 
her speech, 
And there's concentrated honey in her smile. 

Oh, the fever of the dance-hall and the glitter and 
the shine, 
The beauty, and the jewels, and the whirl, 
The madness of the music, the rapture of the wine, 

The languorous allurement of a girl! 
She is like a lost madonna; he is gaunt, unkempt 
and grim; 
But she fondles him and gazes in his eyes; 
Her kisses seek his heavy lips, and soon it seems 
to him 
He has staked a little claim in Paradise. 

73 



THE MAN FROM ELDORADO 

"Who's for a juicy two-step?" cries the master of 
the floor; 
The music throbs with soft, seductive beat. 
There's glitter, gilt and gladness; there are pretty 
girls galore; 
There's a woolly man with moccasins on feet. 
They know they've got him going; he is buying 
wine for all; 
They crowd around as buzzards at a feast, 
Then when his poke is empty they boost him from 
the hall, 
And spurn him in the gutter like a beast. 

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's painting 
red the town; 
Behind he leaves a trail of yellow dust; 
In a whirl of senseless riot he is ramping up and 
down: 
There's nothing checks his madness and his 
lust. 
And soon the word is passed around — it travels 
like a flame; 
They fight to clutch his hand and call him friend, 
The chevaliers of lost repute, the dames of sorry 
fame; 
Then comes the grim awakening — the end. 



THE MAN FROM ELDORADO 

IV. 

He's the man from Eldorado, and he gives a grand 
affair ; 
There's feasting, dancing, wine without re- 
straint. 
The smooth Beau Brummels of the bar, the faro 
men, are there; 
The tinhorns and purveyors of red paint; 
The sleek and painted women, their predacious 
eyes aglow — 
Sure Klondike City never saw the like; 
Then Muckluck Mag proposed the toast, "The giver 
of the show, 
The livest sp?rt that ever hit the pike." 



The "live one" rises to his feet; he stammers to 
reply — 
And then there comes before his muddled brain 
A vision of green vastitudes beneath an April 
sky, 
And clover pastures drenched with silver rain. 
He knows that it can never be, that he is down and 
out; 
Life leers at him with foul and fetid breath; 
And then amid the revelry, the song and cheer and 
shout, 
He suddenly grows grim and cold as death. 

75 



THE MAN FROM ELDORADO 

He grips the table tensely, and he says: "Deal 
friends of mine, 
I've let you dip your fingers in my purse; 
I've crammed you at my table, and I've drowned 
you in my wine, 
And I've little left to give you but — my curse. 
I've failed supremely in my plans; it's rather late 
to whine; 
My poke is mighty weasened up and small. 
I thank you each for coming here; the happiness 
is mine — 
And now, you thieves and harlots, take it all." 

He twists the thong from off his poke; he swings 
it o'er his head; 
The nuggets fall around their feet like grain. 
They rattle over roof and wall; they scatter, roll 
and spread; 
The dust is like a shower of golden rain. 
The guests a moment stand aghast, then grovel on 
the floor; 
They fight, and snarl, and claw, like beasts of 
prey; 
And then, as everybody grabbed and everybody 
swore, 
The man from Eldorado slipped away. 



76 



THE MAN FROM ELDORADO 

v. 

Re's the man from Eldorado, and they found him 
stiff and dead, 
Half covered by the freezing ooze and dirt. 
A clotted Colt was in his hand, a hole was in his 
head, 
And he wore an old and oily buckskin shirt. 
His eyes were fixed and horrible, as one who hails 
the end; 
The frost had set him rigid as a log; 
And there, half lying on his breast, his last and only 
friend, 
There crouched and whined a mangy yellow dog. 



77 



MY FRIENDS 

The man above was a murderer, the man below 

was a thief; 
And I lay there in the bunk between, ailing beyond 

belief; 
A weary armful of skin and bone, wasted with pain 

and grief. 

My feet were froze, and the lifeless toes were purple 

and green and gray; 
The little flesh that clung to my bones, you could 

punch it in holes like clay; 
The skin on my gums was a sullen black, and slowly 

peeling away. 

I was sure enough in a direful fix, and often I won- 
dered why 

They did not take the chance that was left and 
leave me alone to die, 

Or finish me off with a dose of dope — so utterjy 
lost was I. 

78 



MY FRIENDS 

But no; they brewed me the green-spruce tea, and 

nursed me there like a child; 
And the homicide he was good to me, and bathed 

my sores and smiled; 
And the thief he starved that I might be fed, and 

his eyes were kind and mild. 

Yet they were woefully wicked men, and often at 

night in pain 
I heard the murderer speak of his deed and dream 

it over again; 
I heard the poor thief sorrowing for the dead self 

he had slain. 

I'll never forget that bitter dawn, so evil, askew 
and gray, 

When they wrapped me round in the skins of 
beasts and they bore me to a sleigh, 

And we started out with the nearest post an hun- 
dred miles away. 

I'll never forget the trail they broke, with its tense, 
unuttered woe; 

And the crunch, crunch, crunch as their snow- 
shoes sank through the crust of the hollow 
snow; 

And my breath would fail, and every beat of my 
heart was like a blow. 

79 



MY FRIENDS 

And oftentimes I would die the death, yet wake 

up to life anew; 
The sun would be all ablaze on the waste, and the 

sky a blighting blue, 
And the tears would rise in my snow-blind eyes 

and furrow my cheeks like dew. 

And the camps we made when their strength out- 
played and the day was pinched and wan; 

And oh, the joy of that blessed halt, and how I 
did dread the dawn; 

And how I hated the weary men who rose and 
dragged me on. 

And oh, how I begged to rest, to rest — the snow 

was so sweet a shroud ; 
And oh, how I cried when they urged me on, cried 

and cursed them aloud; 
Yet on they strained, all racked and pained, and 

sorely their backs were bowed. 

And then it was all like a lurid dream, and I prayed 

for a swift release 
From the ruthless ones who would not leave me to 

die alone in peace; 
Till I wakened up and I found myself at the post 

of the Mounted Police. 

80 



MY FRIENDS 

And there was my friend the murderer, and there 

was my friend the thief, 
With bracelets of steel around their wrists, and 

wicked beyond belief: 
But when they come to God's judgment seat — 

may I be allowed the brief. 



81 



THE PROSPECTOR 

I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety- 
eight, 
A-purpose to revisit the old claim. 
I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of 
Fate, 
And the lads who once were with me in the 
game. 
Poor boys, they're down-and-outers, and there's 
scarcely one to-day 
Can show a dozen colors in his poke; 
And me, I'm still prospecting, old and battered, 
gaunt and gray, 
And I'm looking for a grub-stake, and I'm 
broke. 

I strolled up old Bonanza. The same old moon 
looked down; 
The same old landmarks seemed to yearn to me ; 
But the cabins all were silent, and the flat, once like 
a town, 
Was mighty still and lonesome-like to see. 

82 



THE PROSPECTOR 

There were piles and piles of tailings where we 
toiled with pick and pan, 

And turning round a bend I heard a roar, 
And there a giant gold-ship of the very newest plan 

Was tearing chunks of pay-dirt from the shore. 

It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved 
and swung; 
It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and sighs; 
Its bill of fare was rock and sand; the tailings 
were its dung; 
It glared around with fierce electric eyes. 
Full fifty buckets crammed its maw; it bellowed 
out for more; 
It looked like some great monster in the gloom. 
With two to feed its sateless greed, it worked for 
seven score, 
And I sighed: "Ah, old-time miner, here's your 
doom!" 

The idle windlass turns to rust; the sagging sluice- 
box falls; 
The holes you digged are water to the brim; 
Your little sod-roofed cabins with the snugly moss- 
chinked walls 
Are deathly now and mouldering and dim. 
The battle-field is silent where of old you fought 
it out; 
The claims you fiercely won are lost and sold; 

83 



THE PROSPECTOR 

But there's a little army that they'll never put to 
rout — 
The men who simply live to seek the gold. 



The men who can't remember when they learned 
to swing a pack, 
Or in what lawless land the quest began; 
The solitary seeker with his grub-stake on his back, 

The restless buccaneer of pick and pan. 
On the mesas of the Southland, on the tundras of 
the North, 
You will find us, changed in face but still the 
same; 
And it isn't need, it isn't greed that sends us faring 
forth — 
It's the fever, it's the glory of the game. 



For once you've panned the speckled sand and seen 
the bonny dust, 
Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell; 
It's little else you care about; you go because you 
must, 
And you feel that you could follow it to hell. 
You'd follow it in hunger, and you'd follow it in 
cold; 
You'd follow it in solitude and pain; 

84 



THE PROSPECTOR 

And when you're stiff and battened down let some- 
one whisper "Gold," 
You're lief to rise and follow it again. 



Yet look you, if I find the stuff it's just like so much 
dirt; 
I fling it to the four winds like a child. 
It's wine and painted women and the things tha\ 
do me hurt, 
Till I crawl back, beggared, broken, to the Wild. 
Till I crawl back, sapped and sodden, to my grub- 
stake and my tent — 
There's a city, there's an army (hear them 
shout). 
There's the gold in millions, millions, but I haven't 
got a cent; 
And oh, it's me, it's me that found it out. 



It was my dream that made it good, my dream 
that made me go 
To lands of dread and death disprized of man; 
But oh, I've known a glory that their hearts will 
never know, 
When I picked the first big nugget from my pan. 
It's still my dream, my dauntless dream, that drives 
me forth once more 
To seek and starve and suffer in the Vast; 

85 



THE PROSPECTOR 

That heaps my heart with eager hope, that glim, 
mers on before — 
My dream that will uplift me to the last. 

Perhaps I am stark crazy, but there's none of you 
too sane; 
It's just a little matter of degree. 
My hobby is to hunt out gold; it's fortressed in 
my brain; 
It's life and love and wife and home to me. 
And I'll strike it, yes, I'll strike it; I've a hunch 
I cannot fail; 
I've a vision, I've a prompting, I've a call; 
I hear the hoarse stampeding of an army on my 
trail, 
To the last, the greatest gold camp of them all. 

Beyond the shark-tooth ranges sawing savage at 
the sky 
There's a lowering land no white man ever struck; 
There's gold, there's gold in millions, and I'll find 
it if I die, 
And I'm going there once more to try my luck. 
Maybe I'll fail — what matter? It's a mandate, it's 
a vow; 
And when in lands of dreariness and dread 
You seek the last lone frontier, far beyond your 
frontiers now, 
You will find the old prospector, silent, dead. 
86 



THE PROSPECTOR 

You will find a tattered tent-pole with a ragged robe 
below it; 
You will find a rusted gold-pan on the sod; 
You will find the claim I'm seeking, with my bones 
as stakes to show it; 
But Tve sought the last Recorder, and He's — God. 



87 



THE BLACK SHEEP 



" The aristocratic ne'er-do-well in Canada frequently 
finds his way into the ranks of the Royal North-West 
Mounted Police.'' — Extract. 



Hark to the ewe that bore him: 

" What has muddied the strain? 
Never his brothers before him 

Showed the h nt of a stain." 
Hark o the tups and wethers; 

Hark to the old gray ram: 
" We're all of us white, but he's black as night, 

And he'll never be worth a damn." 

I'm up on the bally wood-pile at the back of the 

barracks yard; 
"A damned disgrace to the force, sir," with a 

comrade standing guard ; 
Making the bluff I'm busy, doing my six months 

hard. 



THE BLACK SHEEP 

"Six months hard and dismissed, sir." Isn't that 

rather hell? 
And all because of the liquor laws and the wiles 

of a native belle — 
Some "hooch" I gave to a si wash brave who swore 

that he wouldn't tell. 



At least they say that I did it. It's so in the town 

report. 
All that I can recall is a night of revel and sport, 
When I woke with a "head" in the guard-room, 

and they dragged me sick into court. 



And the O. C. said: "You are guilty," and I said 

never a word ; 
For, hang it, you see I couldn't — I didn't know what 

had occurred, 
And, under the circumstances, denial would be 

absurd. 



But the one that cooked my bacon was Grubbe, of 

the City Patrol. 
He fagged for my room at Eton, and didn't I devil 

his soul! 
And now he is getting even, landing me down in 

the hole. 

89 



THE BLACK SHEEP 

Plugging away on the wood-pile; doing chores 

round the square. 
There goes an officer's lady — gives me a haughty 

stare — 
Me that's an earl's own nephew — that is the 

hardest to bear. 

To think of the poor old mater awaiting her prodi- 
gal son. 

Tho' I broke her heart with my folly, I was always 
the white-haired one. 

(That fatted calf that they're cooking will surely 
be overdone.) 

I'll go back and yarn to the Bishop; I'll dance 

with the village belle; 
I'll hand round tea to the ladies, and everything 

will be well 
Where I have been won't matter; what I have 

seen I won't tell. 



I'll soar to their ken like a comet. They'll see me 

with never a stain; 
But will they reform me? — far from it. We pay 

for our pleasure with pain; 
But the dog will return to his vomit, the hog to 

his wallow again. 

90 



THE BLACK SHEEP 

I've chewed on the rind of creation, and bitter I've 

tasted the same ; 
Stacked up against hell and damnation, I've man- 

aged to stay in the game; 
I've had my moments of sorrow; I've had my 

seasons of shame. 

That's past; when one's nature's a cracked one, 

it's too jolly hard to mend. 
So long as the road is level, so long as I've cash to 

spend. 
I'm bound to go to the devil, and it's all the same 

in the end 

The bugle is sounding for stables; the men troop 

off through the gloom; 
An orderly laying the tables sings in the bright 

mess-room. 
(I'll wash in the prison bucket, and brush with the 

prison broom.) 

I'll lie in my cell and listen; I'll wish that I couldn't 

hear 
The laugh and the chaff of the fellows swigging the 

canteen beer; 
The nasal tone of the gramophone playing "The 

Bandolier." 

9i 



THE BLACK SHEEP 

And it seems to me, though it's misty, that night 

of the flowing bowl, 
That the man who potlatched the whiskey and 

landed me into the hole 
Was Grubbe, that unmerciful bounder, Grubb*, of the 

City Patrol. 



9* 



THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR 

I will not wash my face; 

I will not brush my hair; 
I "pig" around the place — 

There's nobody to care. 
Nothing but rock and tree; 

Nothing but wood and stone, 
Oh, God, it's hell to be 

Alone, alone, alone! 



Snow-peaks and deep-gashed draws 

Corral me in a ring. 
I feel as if I was 

The only living thing 
On all this blighted earth; 

And so I frowst and shrink, 
And crouching by my hearth 

I hear the thoughts I think. 

I think of all I miss — 
The boys I used to know; 

The girls I used to kiss; 
The coin I used to blow: 

93 



THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR 

The bars I used to haunt; 

The racket and the row; 
The beers I didn't want 

(I wish I had 'em now). 



Day after day the Same, 

Only a little worse; 

No one to grouch or blame- 
On, for a loving curse! 

Oh, in the night I fear, 

Haunted by nameless things, 

Just for a voice to cheer, 
Just for a hand that clings! 

Faintly as from a star 

Voices come o'er the line; 
Voices of ghosts afar, 

Not in this world of mine; 
Lives in whose loom I grope; 

Words in whose weft I hear 
Eager the thrill of hope, 

Awful the chill of fear. 



I'm thinking out aloud; 

I reckon that is bad; 
(The snow is like a shroud)— 

Maybe I'm going mad. 

94 



THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR 

Say! wouldn't that be tough? 

This awful hush that hugs 
And chokes one is enough 

To make a man go "bugs." 



There's not a thing to do; 

I cannot sleep at night; 
No wonder I'm so blue; 

Oh, for a friendly fight! 
The din and rush of strife; 

A music-hall aglow; 
A crowd, a city, life — 

Dear God, I miss it so! 

Here, you have moped enough! 

Brace up and play the game! 
But say, it's awful tough — 

Day after day the same 
(I've said that twice, I bet). 

Well, there's not much to say. 
I wish I had a pet, 

Or something I could play. 

Cheer up! don't get so glum 
And sick of everything; 

The worst is yet to come; 
God help you till the Spring. 

95 



THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR 

God shield you from the Fear; 
Teach you to laugh, not moan. 

Ha! ha! it sounds so queer- 
Alone, alone, alone! 






9& 



THE WOOD-CUTTER 

The sky is like an envelope, 

One of those blue official things; 
And, sealing it, to mock our hope, 

The moon, a silver wafer, clings. 
What shall we find when death gives leave 
To read — our sentence or reprieve? 

I'm holding it down on God's scrap-pile, up on the 
fag-end of earth; 
O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that 
grits at my feet; 
Face to face with my soul-self, weighing my life 
at its worth ; 
Wondering what I was made for, here in my 
last retreat. 

Last! Ah, yes, it's the finish. Have ever you heard 
a man cry? 
(Sobs that rake him and rend him, right from 
- the base of the chest.) 

<)7 



THE WOOD CUTTER 

That's how I've cried, oh, so often; and now 
that my tears are dry, 
I sit in the desolate quiet and wait for the 
infinite Rest. 

Rest! Well, it's restful around me; it's quiet clean 
to the core. 
The mountains pose in their ermine, in golden 
the hills are clad; 
The big, blue, silt-freighted Yukon seethes by my 
cabin door, 
And I think it's only the river that keeps me 
from going mad. 

By day it's a ruthless monster, a callous, insatiate 

thing, 

With oily bubble and eddy, with sudden swirling 

of breast ; 

By night it's a writhing Titan, sullenly murmuring, 

Ever and ever goaded, and ever crying for rest. 

It cries for its human tribute, but me it will never 
drown. 
I've learned the lore of my river; my river 
obeys me well. 
I hew and I launch my cordwood, and raft it to 
Dawson town, 
Where wood means wine and women, and., 
incidentally, hell. 

98 



THE WOOD-GUTTER 

Hell and the anguish thereafter. Here as I sit 
alone 
I'd give the life I have left me to lighten some 
load of care: 

(The bitterest part of the bitter is being denied to 
atone; 

Lips that have mocked at Heaven lend them- 
selves ill to prayer.) 

Impotent as a beetle pierced on the needle of Fate; 
A wretch in a cosmic death-cell, peaks for my prison 
bars; 
! Whelmed by a world stupendous, lonely and listless 
I wait, 
Drowned in a sea of silence, strewn with confetti 
of stars. 

See! from far up the valley a rapier pierces the 
night, 
The white search-ray of a steamer. Swiftly, 
serenely it nears; 
A proud, white, alien presence, a glittering galley 
of light, 
Confident-poised, triumphant, freighted with 
hopes and fears. 

I look as one looks on a vision ; I see it pulsating by; 
I glimpse joy-radiant faces; I hear the thresh 
of the wheel. 

99 



THE WOOD-GUTTER 

Hoof -like my heart beats a moment; then silence 
swoops from the sky. 
Darkness is piled upon darkness. God only 
knows how I feel. 

Maybe you've seen me sometimes; maybe you've 
pitied me then — 
The lonely waif of the wood-camp, here by my 
cabin door. 
Some day you'll look and see not; futile and out- 
cast of men, 
I shall be far from your pity, resting forevermore. 

My life was a problem in ciphers, a weary and 
profitless sum. 
Slipshod and stupid I worked it, dazed by negation 
and doubt. 
Ciphers the total confronts me. Oh, Death, with thy 
moistened thumb, 
Stoop like a petulant schoolboy, wipe me forever ouil 



IOO 



THE SONG OF THE MOUTH-ORGAN 

(With apologies to the singer of the " Song of the Banjo.") 

I'm a homely little bit of tin and bone; 

I'm beloved by the Legion of the Lost; 
I haven't got a "vox humana" tone, 

And a dime or two will satisfy my cost. 
I don't attempt your high-falutin' flights; 

I am more or less uncertain on the key; 
But I tell you, boys, there's lots and lots of nights 

When you've taken mighty comfort out of me. 

I weigh an ounce or two, and I'm so small 

You can pack me in the pocket of your vest; 
And when at night so wearily you crawl 

Into your bunk and stretch your limbs to rest, 
You take me out and play me soft and low, 

The simple songs that trouble your heartstrings: 
The tunes you used to fancy long ago, 

Before you made a rotten mess of things. 

IOI 



THE SONG OF THE MOUTH ORGAN 

Then a dreamy look will come into your eyes, 

And you break off in the middle of a note; 
And then, with just the dreariest of sighs, 

You drop me in the pocket of your coat. 
But somehow I have bucked you up a bit; 

And, as you turn around and face the wall, 
You don't feel quite so spineless and unfit — 

You're not so bad a fellow after all. 

Do you recollect the bitter Arctic night; 

Your camp beside the canyon on the trail; 
Your tent a tiny square of orange light; 

The moon above consumptive-like and pale; 
Your supper cooked, your little stove aglow; 

You tired, but snug and happy as a child? 
Then 'twas "Turkey in the Straw" till your lips 
were nearly raw, 

And you hurled your bold defiance at the Wild 

Do you recollect the flashing, lashing pain; 

The gulf of humid blackness overhead; 
The lightning making rapiers of the rain; 

The cattle-horns like candles of the dead 
You sitting on your bronco there alone, 

In your slicker, saddle-sore and sick with cold? 
Do you think the silent herd did not hear "The 
Mocking Bird," 

Or relish "Silver Threads among th/» Gold?" 

T02 



THE SONG OF THE MOUTH-ORGAN 

Do you recollect the wild Magellan coast; 

The head-winds and the icy, roaring seas; 
The nights you thought that everything was lost; 

The days you toiled in water to your knees; 
The frozen ratlines shrieking in the gale; 

The hissing steeps and gulfs of livid foam: 
When you cheered your messmates nine with " Ben 
Bolt" and "Clementine," 

And "Dixie Land" and "Seeing Nellie Home?" 

Let the jammy banjo voice the Younger Son, 

Who waits for his remittance to arrive; 
I represent the grimy, gritty one, 

Who sweats his bones to keep himself alive; 
Who's up against the real thing from his birth; 

Whose heritage is hard and bitter toil; 
I voice the weary, smeary ones of earth, 

The helots of the sea and of the soil. 

I'm the Steinway of strange mischief and mischance; 

I'm the Stradivarius of blank defeat; 
In the down- world, when the devil leads the dance, 

I am simply and symbolically meet; 
I'm the irrepressive spirit of mankind; 

I'm the small boy playing knuckle down with 
Death ; 
At the end of all things known, where God's rubbish- 
heap is thrown, 
I shrill impudent triumph at a breath. 
103 



THE SONG OF THE MOUTH-ORGAN 

I'm a humble little bit of tin and horn; 

I'm a byword, I'm a plaything, I'm a jest; 
The virtuoso looks on me with scorn ; 

But there's times when I am better than th p 
best. 
Ask the stoker and the sailor of the sea; 

Ask the mucker and the hewer of the pine; 
Ask the herder of the plain, ask the gleaner of the 
grain — 

There's a lowly, loving kingdom — and it's mine. 



JO4. 



THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT 



Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We 
sprang from our stools. 

Gold! We wheeled in the furrow, fired with the 
faith of fools. 

Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night and 
the cold, 

Heard we the clarion summons, followed the master- 
lure — Gold ! 

Men from the sands of the Sunland ; men from the 
woods of the West; 

Men from the farms and the cities, into the North- 
land we pressed. 

Graybeards and striplings and women, good men 
and bad men and bold, 

Leaving our homes and our loved ones, crying 
exultantly— "Gold!" 

Never was seen such an army, pitiful, futile, unfit; 
Never was seen such a spirit, manifold courage and 
grit 

I05 



THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT 

Never has been such a cohort under one bannef 

unrolled 
As surged to the ragged -edged Arctic, urged by 

the arch-tempter — Gold. 

''Farewell!" we cried to our dearests; little we 

cared for their tears. 
" Farewell! " we cried to the humdrum and the yoke 

of the hireling years; 
Just like a pack of school-boys, and the big crowd 

cheered us good-bye. 
Never were hearts so uplifted, never were hopes so 

high. 

The spectral shores flitted past us, and every whirl 

of the screw 
Hurled us nearer to fortune, and ever we planned 

what we'd do — 
Do with the gold when we got it — big, shiny 

nuggets like plums, 
There in the sand of the river, gouging it out with 

our thumbs. 



And one man wanted a castle, another a racing 
stud; 

A third would cruise in a palace yacht like a red- 
necked prince of blood. 

106 






THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT 

And so we dreamed and we vaunted, millionaires 

to a man, 
Leaping to wealth in our visions long ere the trail 

began. 

n. 

We landed in wind-swept Skagway. We joined 

the weltering mass, 
Clamoring over their outfits, waiting to climb the 

Pass. 
We tightened our girths and our pack-£ iraps ; we 

linked on the Human Chain, 
Struggling up to the summit, where evt cy step was 

a pain. 

Gone was the joy of our faces, grim and haggard 

and pale; 
The heedless mirth of the shipboard was changed 

to the care of the trail. 
We flung ourselves in the struggle packing out 

grub in relays, 
Step by step to the summit in the bale of the winter 

days. 

Floundering deep in the sump-hoks, stumbling out 

again ; 
Crying with cold and weakness, crazy with fear and 

pain. 

107 



THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT 

Then from the depths of our travail, ere our spirits 

were broke, 
Grim, tenacious and savage, the lust of the trail 

awoke. 



"Klondike or bust!" rang the slogan; every man 

for his own. 
Oh, how we flogged the horses, staggering skin and 

bone! 
Oh, how we cursed their weakness, anguish they 

could not tell, 
Breaking their hearts in our passion, lashing them 

on till they fell! 

For grub meant gold to our thinking, and all that 
could walk must pack; 

The sheep for the shambles stumbled, each with a 
load on its back; 

And even the swine were burdened, and grunted 
and squealed and rolled, 

And men went mad in the moment, huskily clam- 
oring "Gold!" 

Oh, we were brutes and devils, goaded by lust and 
fear! 

Our eyes were strained to the summit; the weak- 
lings dropped to the rear, 

108 



THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT 

Falling in heaps by the trail-side, heart-broken, 

limp and wan; 
But the gaps closed up in an instant, and heedless 

the chain went on. 

Never will I forget it, there on the mountain face, 

Antlike, men with their burdens, clinging in icy 
space ; 

Dogged, determined and dauntless, cruel and cal- 
lous and cold, 

Cursing, blaspheming, reviling, and ever that battle- 
cry— "Gold!" 

Thus toiled we, the army of fortune, in hunger and 

hope and despair, 
Till glacier, mountain and forest vanished, and, 

radiantly fair, 
There at our feet lay Lake Bennett, and down to 

its welcome we ran: 
The trail of the land was over, the trail of the water 

began. 

in. 

We built our boats and we launched them. Never 

has been such a fleet; 
A packing-case for a bottom, a mackinaw for a sheet. 
Shapeless, grotesque, lopsided, flimsy, makeshift 

and crude, 
Each man after his fashion builded as best he could. 

109 



THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT 

Each man worked like a demon, as prow to ruddei 

we raced; 
The winds of the Wild cried "Hurry!" the voice of 

the waters, "Haste!" 
We hated those driving before us; we dreaded 

those pressing behind; 
We cursed the slow current that bore us ; we prayed 

to the God of the wind. 



Spring! and the hillsides flourished, vivid in jew- 
elled green; 

Spring! and our hearts' blood nourished envy and 
hatred and spleen. 

Little cared we for the Spring-birth; much cared 
we to get on — 

Stake in the Great White Channel, stake ere the 
best be gone. 



The greed of the gold possessed us; pity and love 

were forgot; 
Covetous visions obsessed us ; brother with brother 

fought. 
Partner with partner wrangled, each one claiming 

his due; 
Wrangled and halved their outfits, sawing their 

boats in two. 

no 



THE TRAIL OF NINETY EIGHT 

Thuswise we voyaged Lake Bennett, Tagish, 

then Windy Arm, 
Sinister, savage and baleful, boding us hate and 

harm. 
Many a scow was shattered there on that iron 

shore; 
Many a heart was broken straining at sweep and 

oar. 



We roused Lake Marsh with a chorus, we drifted 
many a mile; 

There was the canyon before us — cave-like its 
dark defile; 

The shores swept faster and faster; the river nar- 
rowed to wrath; 

Waters that hissed disaster reared upright in our 
path. 



Beneath us the green tumult churning, above us 
the cavernous gloom; 

Around us, swift twisting and turning, the black, 
sullen waiis of a tomb. 

We spun like a chip in a mill-race; our hearts ham- 
mered under the test; 

Then — oh, the relief on each chill face!— we soared 
into sunlight and rest. 

in 



THE TRAIL OF NINETY EIGHT 

Hand sought for hand on the instant. Cried we, 

"Our troubles are o'er!" 
Then, like a rumble of thunder, heard we a canorous 

roar. 
Leaping and boiling and seething, saw we a cauldron 

afume; 
There was the rage of the rapids, there was the 

menace of doom. 



The river springs like a racer, sweeps through a 

gash in the rock; 
Buts at the boulder-ribbed bottom, staggers and 

rears at the shock; 
Leaps like a terrified monster, writhes in its fury 

and pain; 
Then with the crash of a demon springs to the 

onset again. 



Dared we that ravening terror; heard we its din 

in our ears; 
Called on the Gods of our fathers, juggled forlorn 

with our fears; 
Sank to our waists in its fury, tossed to the sky 

like a fleece; 
Then, when our dread was the greatest, crashed 

into safety and peace. 

112 



THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT 

But what of the others that followed, losing their 

boats by the score? 
Well could we see them and hear them, strung 

down that desolate shore. 
What of the poor souls that perished? Little of 

them shall be said — 
On to the Golden Valley, pause not to bury the 

dead. 



Then there were days of drifting, breezes soft as a 

sigh; 
Night trailed her robe of jewels over the floor of 

the sky. 
The moonlit stream was a python, silver, sinuous, 

vast, 
That writhed on a shroud of velvet — well, it was 

done at last. 



There were the tents of Dawson, there the scar of 

the slide; 
Swiftly we poled o'er the shallows, swiftly leapt 

o'er the side. 
Fires fringed the mouth of Bonanza; sunset gilded 

the dome; 
The test of the trail was over — thank God, thank 

God, we were Home! 

113 



THE BALLAD OF GUM-BOOT BEN 

He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and 

dim. 
He asked me for a grubstake, and the same I gave 

to him. 
He hinted of a hidden trove, and when I made so 

bold 
To question his veracity, this is the tale he told. 

"I do not seek the copper streak, nor yet the 

yellow dust; 
I am not fain for sake of gain to irk the frozen 

crust ; 
Let fellows gross find gilded dross, far other is my 

mark; 
Oh, gentle youth, this is the truth — I go to seek 

the Ark. 

"I prospected the Pelly bed, I prospected the 

White; 
The Nordenscold for love of gold I piked from 

morn till night; 

114 



THE BALLAD OF GUM-BOOT BEN 

Afar and near for many a year I led the wild 

stampede, 
Until I guessed that all my quest was vanity and 

greed. 



"Then came I to a land I knew no man had ever 

seen, 
A haggard land, forlornly spanned by mountains 

lank and lean; 
The nitchies said 'twas full of dread, of smoke and 

fiery breath, 
And no man dare put foot in there for fear of pain 

and death. 



"But I was made all unafraid, so, careless ar.d alone, 
Day after day I made my way into that land 

unknown ; 
Night after night by camp-fire light I crouched in 

lonely thought; 
Oh, gentle youth, this is the truth — I knew not 

what I sought. 



"I rose at dawn; I wandered on. 'Tis somewhat 

fine and grand 
To be alone and hold your own in God's vast 

awesome land; 

115 



THE BALLAD OF GUM-BOOT BEN 

Come woe or weal, 'tis fine to feel a hundred 

miles between 
The trails you dare and pathways where the feet 

of men have been. 

"And so it fell on me a spell of wander-lust was 

cast. 
The land was still and strange and chill, and 

cavernous and vast; 
And sad and dead, and dull as lead, the valleys 

sought the snows; 
And far and wide on every side the ashen peaks 

arose. 

"The moon was like a silent spike that pierced 

the sky right through; 
The small stars popped and winked and hopped 

in vastitudes of blue; 
And unto me for company came creatures of the 

shade, 
And formed in rings and whispered things that 

made me half afraid. 

"And strange though be, 'twas borne on me that 

land had lived of old, 
And men had crept and slain and slept where now 

they toiled for gold ; 

116 



THE BALLAD OF GUM-BOOT BEN 

Through jungles dim the mammoth grim had 

sought the oozy fen, 
And on his track, all bent of back, had crawled the 

hairy men. 

"And furthermore, strange deeds of yore in this 

dead place were done. 
They haunted me, as wild and free I roamed from 

sun to sun; 
Until I came where sudden flame uplit a terraced 

height, 
A regnant peak that seemed to seek the coronal 

of night. 

''I scaled the peak; my heart was weak, yet on 

and on I pressed. 
Skyward I strained until I gained its dazzling 

silver crest; 
And there I found, with all around a world supine 

and stark, 
Swept clean of snow, a flat plateau, and on it 

lay — the Ark. 

"Yes, there, I knew, by two and two the beasts did 

disembark, 
And so in haste I ran and traced in letters on the 

Ark 

117 



THE BALLAD OF GUM BOOT BEN 

My human name — Ben Smith's the same. And 

now I want to float 
A syndicate to haul and freight to town that noble 

boat." 

/ met him later in a bar and made a gay remark 
Anent an ancient miner and an option on the Ark. 
He gazed at me reproachfully, as only topers can; 
But what he said I can't repeat — he was a bad old 
man. 



CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE 

In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain 

and clear 
That who would wear the scarlet coat shall say 

good-bye to fear; 
Shall be a guardian of the right, a sleuth-hound of 

the trail — 
In the little Crimson Manual there's no such word 

as" fair- 
Shall follow on though heavens fall, or hell's top- 
turrets freeze, 
Half round the world, if need there be, on bleeding 

hands and knees. 
It's duty, duty, first and last, the Crimson Manual 

saith ; 
The Scarlet Rider makes reply: "It's duty — to 

the death." 
And so they sweep the solitudes, free men from all 

the earth; 
And so they sentinel the woods, the wilds that 

know their worth; 
And so they scour the startled plains and mock 

at hurt and pain, 

U9 



CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE 

And read their Crimson Manual, and find their 

duty plain. 
Knights of the lists of unrenown, born of the 

frontier's need, 
Disdainful of the spoken word, exultant in the 

deed; 
Unconscious heroes of the waste, proud players 

of the game, 
Props of the power behind the throne, Mpholders 

of the name: 
For thus the Great White Chief hath said, "In 

all my lands be peace," 
And to maintain his word he gave his West the 

Scarlet Police. 

Livid-lipped was the valley, still as the grave of 
God; 
Misty shadows of mountain thinned into mists 
of cloud ; 
Corpselike and stark was the land, with a quiet 
that crushed and awed, 
And the stars of the weird sub-arctic glimmered 
over its shroud. 

Deep in the trench of the valley two men stationed 
the Post, 
Seymour and Clancy the reckless, fresh from 
the long patrol; 

1 20 



CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE 

Seymour, the sergeant, and Clancy — Clancy who 
made his boast 
He could cinch like a bronco the Northland, 
and cling to the prongs of the Pole. 

Two lone men on detachment, standing for law 
on the trail; 
Undismayed in the vastness, wise with the 
wisdom of old — 
Out of the night hailed a half-breed telling a pitiful 
tale, 
"White man starving and crazy on the banks 
of the Nordenscold." 

Up sprang the red-haired Clancy, lean and eager 
of eye; 
Loaded the long toboggan, strapped each dog 
at its post; 
Whirled his lash at the leader; then, with a whoop 
and a cry, 
Into the Great White Silence faded away like 
a ghost. 

The clouds were a misty shadow, the hills were 
a shadowy mist; 
Sunless, voiceless and pulseless, the day was a 
dream of woe; 

121 



CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE 

Through the ice-rifts the river smoked and bubbled 
and hissed; 
Behind was a trail fresh broken, in front the un- 
trodden snow. 



Ahead of the dogs ploughed Clancy, haloed by 

steaming breath ; 
Through peril of open water, through ache of 

insensate cold; 
Up rivers wantonly winding in a land affianced 

to death, 
Till he came to a cowering cabin on the banks 

of the Nordenscold. 

Then Clancy loosed his revolver, and he strode 
through the open door; 
And there was the man he sought for, crouching 
beside the fire; 
The hair of his beard was singeing, the frost on his 
back was hoar, 
And ever he crooned and chanted as if he never 
would tire: — 

"I panned and I panned in the shiny sand, and 1 

sniped on the river bar; 
But I know, I know, that it's down below that 

the golden treasures are; 

122 



CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE 

So Til wait and wait till the floods abate, and Til 

sink a shaft once more, 
And Td like to bet that Til go home yet with a 

brass band playing before." 

He was nigh as thin as a sliver, and he whined like 
a Moose-hide cur; 
So Clancy clothed him and nursed him as a 
mother nurses a child ; 
Lifted him on the toboggan, wrapped him in robes 
of fur, 
Then with the dogs sore straining started to 
face the Wild. 

Said the Wild, "I will crush this Clancy, so fearless 
and insolent; 
For him will I loose my fury, and blind and 
buffet and beat; 
Pile up my snows to stay him; then when his 
strength is spent, 
Leap on him from my ambush and crush him 
under my feet. 

"Him will I ring with my silence, compass him 
with my cold; 
Closer and closer clutch him unto mine icy 
breast ; 

123 



CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE 

Buffet him with my blizzards, deep in my snows 
enfold, 
Claiming his life as my tribute, giving my 
wolves the rest." 

Clancy crawled through the vastness; o'er him 
the hate of the Wild ; 
Full on his face fell the blizzard; cheering his 
huskies he ran; 
Fighting, fierce-hearted and tireless, snows that 
drifted and piled, 
With ever and ever behind him singing the 
crazy man. 

"Sing key, sing ho, for the ice and snow, 

And a heart that's ever merry; 
Let us trim and square with a lover's care 

(For why should a man be sorry?) 
A grave deep, deep, with the moon a-peep, 

A grave in the frozen mould. 
Sing hey, sing ho, for the winds that blow, 
And a grave deep down in the ice and snow, 

A grave in the land of gold" 

Day after day of darkness, the whirl of the seeth- 
ing snows; 
Day after day of blindness, the swoop of the 
stinging blast; 

124 



CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE 

On through a blur of fury the swing of staggering 
blows ; 
On through a world of turmoil, empty, inane 
and vast. 

Night with its writhing storm-whirl, night des- 
pairingly black; 
Night with its hours of terror, numb and end' 
lessly long; 
Night with its weary waiting, fighting the shadows 
back, 
And ever the crouching madman singing his 
crazy song. 

Cold with its creeping terror, cold with its sudden 
clinch ; 
Cold so utter you wonder if 'twill ever again be 
warm; 
Clancy grinned as he shuddered, "Surely it isn't 
a cinch 
Being wet-nurse to a looney in the teeth of an 
arctic storm." 

The blizzard passed and the dawn broke, knife- 
edged and Crystal clear; 
The sky was a blue-domed iceberg, sunshine 
outlawed away; 

125 



CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE 

Ever by snowslide and ice-rip haunted and hovered 
the Fear; 
Ever the Wild malignant poised and panted to 
slay. 

The lead-dog freezes in harness — cut him out of 
the team! 
The lung of the wheel-dog's bleeding — shoot 
him and let him lie! 
On and on with the others — lash them until they 
scream ! 
"Pull for your lives, you devils! On! To halt 
is to die." 

There in the frozen vastness Clancy fought with 
his foes; 
The ache of the stiffened fingers, the cut of the 
snowshoe thong; 
Cheeks black-raw through the hood-flap, eyes that 
tingled and closed, 
And ever to urge and cheer him quavered the 
madman's song. 

Colder it grew and colder, till the last heat left the 
earth, 
And there in the great stark stillness the bale 
fires glinted and gleamed, 

126 



CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE 

And the Wild all around exulted and shook with 
a devilish mirth, 
And life was far and forgotten, the ghost of a 
joy once dreamed. 

Death! And one who defied it, a man of the 
Mounted Police; 
Fought it there to a standstill long after hope 
was gone ; 
Grinned through his bitter anguish, fought with- 
out let or cease, 
Suffering, straining, striving, stumbling, strug- 
gling on. 

Till the dogs lay down in their traces, and rose and 
staggered and fell; 
Till the eyes of him dimmed with shadows, and 
the trail was so hard to see; 
Till the Wild howled out triumphant, and the 
world was a frozen hell — 
Then said Constable Clancy: "I guess that it's 
up to me." 

Far down the trail they saw him, and his hands 
they were blanched like bone; 
His face was a blackened horror, from his eye- 
lids the salt rheum ran; 

127 



CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE 

His feet he was lifting strangely, as if they were 
made of stone, 
But safe in his arms and sleeping he carried 
the crazy man. 

So Clancy got into Barracks, and the boys made 
rather a scene; 
And the O. C. called him a hero, and was nice 
as a man could be; 
But Clancy gazed down his trousers at the place 
where his toes had been, 
And then he howled like a husky, and sang in 
a shaky key: 

" When I go back to the old love that's true to the 

finger-tips, 
TU say: 'Here's bushels of gold, love,' and I'll kiss 

my girl on the lips; 
4 it's yours to have and to hold, love.' It's the proud, 

proud boy I'll be, 
When I go back to the old love that's waited so long 

for me.'* 



128 



LOST 

"Black is the sky, but the land is whit 
(O the wind, the snow and the storm 1) — 

Father, where is our boy to-night? 
Pray to God he is safe and warm." 

"Mother, mother, why should you fear? 

Safe is he, and the Arctic moon 
Over his cabin shines so clear — 

Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon." 

"It's getting dark awful sudden. Say, this is 
mighty queer! 
Where in the world have I got to? It's still 
and black as a tomb. 
I reckoned the camp was yonder, I figured the 
trail was here — 
Nothing! Just draw and valley packed with 
quiet and gloom; 

129 



LOST 

Snow that comes down like feathers, thick and 

gobby and gray; 
Night that looks spiteful ugly — seems that I've 

lost my way. 

"The cold's got an edge like a jackknife — it must 

be forty below; 
Leastways that's what it seems like — it cuts so 

fierce to the bone. 
The wind's getting real ferocious; it's heaving and 

whirling the snow; 
It shrieks with a howl of fury, it dies away to 

a moan; 
Its arms sweep round like a banshee's, swift and 

icily white, 
And buffet and blind and beat me. Lord! it's 

a hell of a night. 

*Tm all tangled up in a blizzard. There's only 

one thing to do — 
Keep on moving and moving; it's death, it's 

death if I rest. 
Oh, God! if I see the morning, if only I struggle 

through, 
I'll say the prayers I've forgotten since I lay on 

my mother's breast. 
I seem going round in a circle; maybe the camp is 

near, 

130 



LOST 

Say! did someuody holler? Was it a light I 

saw? 
Or was it only a notion? I'll shout, and maybe 

they'll hear — 
No! the wind only drowns me — shout till my 

throat is raw. 

"The boys are all round the camp-fire wondering 
when I'll be back. 
They'll soon be starting to seek me; they'll 
scarcely wait for the light. 
What will they find, I wonder, when they come to 
the end of my track — 
A hand stuck out of a snowdrift, frozen and 
stiff and white. 
That's what they'll strike, I reckon; that's how 
they'll find their pard, 
A pie-faced corpse in a snowbank — curse you, 
don't be a fool! 
Play the game to the finish ; bet on your very last 
card; 
Nerve yourself for the struggle. Oh, you coward, 
keep cool! 

"I'm going to lick this blizzard; I'm going to live 
the night. 
It can't down me with its bluster — I'm not the 
kind to be beat. 

131 



LOST 

On hands and knees will I buck it; with every 
breath will I fight; 
It's life, it's life that I fight for — never it seemed 
so sweet. 
I know that my face is frozen; my hands are 
numblike and dead; 
But oh, my feet keep a-moving, heavy and hard 
and slow; 
They're trying to kill me, kill me, the night that's 
black overhead, 
The wind that cuts like a razor, the whipcord 
lash of the snow. 
Keep a-moving, a-moving; don't, don't stumble, 
you fool! 
Curse this snow that's a-piling a-purpose to 
block my way. 
It's heavy as gold in the rocker, it's white and 
fleecy as wool; 
It's soft as a bed of feathers, it's warm as a 
stack of hay. 
Curse on my feet that slip so, my poor tired, 
stumbling feet — 
i guess they're a job for the surgeon, they feel 
so queerlike to lift — 
I'll rest them just for a moment — oh, but to rest 
is sweet! 
The awful wind cannot get me, deep, deep down 
in the drift." 



132 



LOST 

" Father, a bitter cry I heard, 

Out of the night so dark and wild. 

Why is my heart so strangely stirred? 
'Twas like the voice of our erring child." 

" Mother, mother, you only heard 
A waterfowl in the locked lagoon — ■ 

Out of the night a wounded bird — 

Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon." 

Who is it talks of sleeping? I'll swear that some- 
body shook 
Me hard by the arm for a moment, but how on 
earth could it be? 
See how my feet are moving — awfully funny they 
look — 
Moving as if they belonged to a someone that 
wasn't me. 
The wind down the night's long alley bowls me 
down like a pin; 
I stagger and fall and stagger, crawl arm-deep 
in the snow. 
Beaten back to my corner, how can I hope to win? 
And there is the blizzard waiting to give me the 
knockout blow. 

Oh, I'm so warm and sleepy! No more hunger and 
pain. 
Just to rest for a moment; was ever rest such 
a joy? 

133 



LOST 

Ha! what was that? I'll swear it, somebody 
shook me again; 
Somebody seemed to whisper: "Fight to the 
last, my boy." 
Fight! That's right, I must struggle. I know 
that to rest means death; 
Death, but then what does death mean? — ease 
from a world of strife. 
Life has been none too pleasant; yet with my 
failing breath 
Still and still must I struggle, fight for the gift 
of life. 



Seems that I must be dreaming! Here is the old 
home trail; 
Yonder a light is gleaming; oh, I know it so well! 
The air is scented with clover; the cattle wait by 
the rail; 
Father is through with the milking; there goes 
the supper-bell. 



Mother, your boy is crying, out in the night and 
cold; 
Let me in and forgive me, I'll never be bad 
any more: 

134 



LOST 

I'm, oh, so sick and so sorry: please, dear mother, 
don't scold — 
It's just your boy, and he wants you. . . , 
Mother, open the door. . . . 

44 Father, father, I saw a face 

Pressed just now to the window-pane/ 

Oh, it gazed for a moment's space, 
Wild and wan, and was gone again /" 

44 Mother, mother, you saw the snow 
Drifted down from the maple tree 

(Oh, the wind that is sobbing so! 
Weary and worn and old are we) — 

Only the snow and a wounded loon — 

Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon.* ? 



135 



L'ENVOI 

We talked of yesteryears, of trails and treasure, 

Of men who played the game and lost or won; 
Of mad stampedes, of toil beyond all measure, 

Of camp-fire comfort when the day was done. 
We talked of sullen nights by moon-dogs haunted, 

Of bird and beast and tree, of rod and gun; 
Of boat and tent, of hunting-trip enchanted 

Beneath the wonder of the midnight sun; 
Of bloody-footed dogs that gnawed the traces, 

Of prisoned seas, wind-lashed and winter-locked 
The ice-gray dawn was pale upon our faces, 

Yet still we filled the cup and still we talked. 

The city street was dimmed. We saw the glitter 
Of moon-picked brilliants on the virgin snow, 

And down the drifted canyon heard the bitter, 
Relentless slogan of the winds of woe. 

The city was forgot, and, parka-skirted, 

We trod that leagueless land that once we knew; 

136 



L'ENVOI 

We saw stream past, down valleys glacier -girted, 
The wolf -worn legions of the caribou. 

We smoked our pipes, o'er scenes of triumph dwelling; 
Of deeds of daring, dire defeats, we talked; 

And other tales that lost not in the telling, 
Ere to our beds uncertainly we walked. 

And so, dear friends, in gentler valleys roaming, 

Perhaps, when on my printed page you look, 
Your fancies by the firelight may go homing 

To that lone land that haply you forsook. 
And if perchance you hear the silence calling, 

The frozen music of star -yearning heights, 
Or, dreaming, see the seines of silver trawling 

Across the sky's abyss on vasty nights, 
You may recall that sweep of savage splendor, 

That land that measures each man at his worth, 
And feel in memory, half fierce, half tender, 

The brotherhood of men that know the North. 



137 



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